Masses of Dead Red Snapper shows the result of rushing to remove offshore oil rigs by using dynamite
Last week on this blog we reprinted an excellent report from Doug Olander, editor of Sport Fishing Magazine, entitled “Stop the Plan to Destroy Our Gulf’s Living Coral Reefs” and the attached photo is a follow up to that blog.
Sportfishermen appreciate the habitat value provided by offshore oil rigs. We think it is important to understand and evaluate the importance of this habitat prior to removing the rig once the oil beneath it has been extracted. Some in the extreme environmental community are so blinded by their dislike for the oil industry that they push to have this important habitat removed without consideration of its potential future habitat value as an artificial reef site. They call it junk on the bottom of the ocean, while the fish and other ocean life call it home.
Since 1995, AFTCO, starting with our former Chairman Milt Shedd, has been working in California to help create a Rig-To-Reefs program. The goal of this program was to evaluate habitat value of an offshore oil rig before it was removed. If it was determined to be a net positive to the marine resource, the underwater portion of that rig would left in place as a life producing artificial reef. The photo shows the obvious damage that canbe caused by removal of an offshore oil rig. But what about the unseen loss? What about the vast quantities of marine life and habitat that is destroyed sight unseen? Converting off shore rigs to artificial reefs can be a valuable tool in our collective efforts to look after the ocean resource.
— Bill
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In an editorial a few years ago, I asked this question: Would anyone mind if the federal government ordered hundreds of coral reefs around the Florida Keys to be dynamited into rubble and hauled away?
One hopes the rhetorical nature of that is obvious. Hell, yes! The uproar would be huge, particularly among environmental groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council.
So I have to wonder why such environmental groups haven’t spoken out against destroying hundreds of living coral reefs in the northern Gulf of Mexico. In fact, at least one — the NRDC — is on record actively opposing any effort to stop such destruction. These groups are aware of the plan, but I suspect most of the public is not or there would be more pushback.
While any government directive to destroy reefs may sound crazy, here’s how it’s going down.
For years, the feds have obligated oil companies to eventually yank out all non-producing oil rigs in the Gulf. That has been happening, but slowly.
Late last year, in what the Coastal Conservation Association calls a knee-jerk reaction to last summer’s oil disaster, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced a directive that all such rigs be pulled out within five years.
That would mean at this point, about 650 offshore rigs would be destroyed. That’s 650 individual, massive, living, vibrant coral-reef ecosystems — obliterated. (And keep in mind, these are huge vertical reefs offering structure and coral where otherwise there would be only barren, smooth bottom.)
But now there may be hope — in the form of federal legislation just introduced by Louisiana Sen. David Vitter called the Rigs to Reefs Habitat Protection Act of 2011. “I appreciate the Coastal Conservation Association bringing this issue to my attention,” he says. “More than ever, we need to create habitat for marine life in the Gulf, not dispose of it. These idle rigs are serving a valuable purpose supporting our fisheries.”
Indeed, Dr. Bob Shipp, chair of the Gulf of Mexico Fisheries Management Council has theorized publicly that one of the main reasons the Gulf is truly swarming with red snapper is the existence of so much habitat where decades ago there was so little.
The Rigs to Reefs Habitat Protection Act would not allow platforms to be removed until assessments are completed to determine whether a platform supports coral populations or other protected species, and to identify any species that have recreational or commercial value. If it is determined that a structure supports substantial reef ecosystems, its decommissioning would be halted until it can be determined that removing it would not harm the reef ecosystem.
A breath of sanity, you say? A big 10-4 to that: From this angler/conservationist, a huge thank-you to both Vitter and CCA.
BUT — the fat lady is far from singing on this one. Legislation proposed and legislation enacted may be poles apart.
You can help save the Gulf’s living reefs — and I hope you will by taking just a moment to click here to go to the CCA web site and send a message to your legislators supporting Vitter’s bill.
Don’t let public apathy or astoundingly misguided “environmentalists” destroy the Gulf’s vast, thriving reef system. As sport fishermen, let’s show, yet again, who the true environmentalists are. Put another way, ask yourself: “Is saving a living coral reef and its communities of marine fish worth one minute of my time?” Do it now — and pass it on. Together, we can stop the destruction of the Gulf’s reefs.
— Doug Olander
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I was four hundred miles west of Grand Cayman, on the continental shelf just to the east of Isla Mujeres, Mexico looking for bait balls of sardines with sailfish feeding on them, while shooting an episode of my TV show “Portraits from the Deep”. Frigates birds circling over the bait will normally announce the presence of sailfish, but just a hundred yards ahead of the boat, I spotted a frothy commotion. Big splashes and the tips of large fins broke the surface sending up volumes of white water. It looked like a sea monster was about to erupt from the surface as we quickly motored on over to see what was happening.
It seemed that two large manta rays were chasing an even bigger manta ray. I jumped in the water, camera in hand and finned hard toward the group of animals that were doing circles in front of me, tearing up the surface in their frantic efforts to keep up the chase. The large female turned directly at me, and with great beats of her twenty foot wings she came head on and swept just a foot beneath me, as I sucked in my stomach to make room for her passing. The two males in ardent pursuit also went by below me. I swiveled to continue the sequence and then she angled her left wing down and dived like a fighter jet, and went out of sight, with the two suitors in hot pursuit. It was two fourteen foot males trying to entice a twenty foot female to mate, but she was having nothing to do with them!
In the Atlantic Ocean manta rays are found in areas with a high concentration of plankton, such as in the western Caribbean off the coast of Mexico and Belize, and in the southern Caribbean off Venezuela, in the same areas frequented by whale sharks
Manta rays are different from all other pelagic rays in that they have two large fleshy lobes, called cephalic limbs on their head, that look like horns, hence the other name given to them , “Devil Ray”. These are actually paddle like in shape and while the ray is feeding with its large terminal mouth wide open they help guide food into the open mouth while swimming forward, often at great speed. In Mexico and Coats Rica, I have seen them attack schools of balled up sardines with rapid lunges and great determination.
When swimming along these horns are rolled up neatly for streamlining. Their coloration is generally dark brown or black on the upper surface, white on the lower surface, with a number of irregular black blotches. Sometimes there is more black than white on the underside. There may be areas of white streaks on the upper side, and sometimes the tips of their magnificent wings have white. Each animal is distinct and different. The smaller related species, the Devil Ray has a brown or even tan upper surface. Their tails are thin but generally quite long
Guy's first hand observation of Manta Ray's has inspired the artwork depicted on this t-shirt from his sportswear collection
A set of gill rakers on their gill bars catches all the microscopic organisms in the same way for other large plankton feeders such as whale sharks, and basking sharks.
Little is known about growth rates and their life history. Opportunities for study have come about recently because of their ability to survive in captivity in large aquaria such as at the Georgia Aquarium, and at Atlantis in Nassau, Bahamas. Mantas are reported up to twenty five feet across, weighing three tons. They probably reach maturity at a large size, and are long lived animals as are all the other large cartilaginous fishes, the sharks and rays. They give birth to fully formed miniatures of themselves that weigh up to thirty pounds.
Adult mantas have few natural predators, such as large sharks and orcas, but most are killed by humans, some are caught in gill nets or harpooned for food as seen on the Pacific coast of Mexico and the Orient, and many are taken as by-catch on long lines set for tunas and swordfish. Oh yes, a manta will eat a bait on a line. I caught and released a couple in Costa Rica while live baiting for black marlin. I have cut off and set free many mantas hooked on long lines in the eastern Pacific. Many mantas are caught in purse seines set on flotsam in the yellowfin tuna and big-eye tuna fishery in the tropical eastern Pacific.
As with most large oceanic animals manta rays are overexploited wherever they occur. However their popularity in certain islands frequented by divers is their saving grace in such accessible locations. Given the choice of seeing a huge manta glide by on twenty foot wings or see it cut up in pieces on an Asian dock, I think most people would choose the former. It is our collective responsibility to conserve the marine environment and protect the biodiversity of our planet.
Good fishing, safe diving.
—Guy Harvey
For a complete list of our other
featured blog posts and to see the full line of Guy Harvey Sportswear, please
visit:www.guyharveysportswear.com
The sale of Guy Harvey Sportswear supports the marine resource in many different ways with its sale of each Guy Harvey product, a contribution is made to the GHOF
During the spring sampling season, three ongoing projects of the Florida Program for Shark Research at UF’s Florida Museum of Natural History, one in collaboration with researchers from Florida State University (FSU), focused on the distribution and movements of adult and subadult sawfishes in the southern portion of its Florida range.
We produced a survey of the waters surrounding U.S. Navy properties in the Key West region in order to determine the current status of sawfishes in those areas for the U.S. Navy/U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Because of obvious security constraints, we were the first fish biologists to sample in these waters in decades.
Concurrently, in conjunction with Dean Grubbs and fellow FSU scientists and the John Carlson of the National Marine Fisheries Service, we sampled the middle and lower Keys and Tortugas region and Florida Bay, catching and satellite tagging eleven sawfishes. Satellite tags give long time and distance of movement information and we hope our tagging will help us better understand seasonal horizontal (up and down the coast) and vertical (depth) movements of the critters.
We also caught and multiple tagged two large adults in Florida Bay, the tags being traditional “spaghetti,” satellite, and active acoustic models. The last allowed us to manually track the minute to minute movements using a receiver held under the boat. Our first saw was “lost” within the first hour or so as it gave us the slip by scooting over a shallow bank, then boogying before we could detect its signal. Having learned our lesson, on our second capture we got in 38 hours of tracking over three days, including day-night comparisons. The sawfish moved about in deeper channels by day, then moved onto shallow, seagrass beds by night. It chose the same shallow grassy area on successive nights, demonstrating some short-term site fidelity. Next spring we plan to initiate placement of underwater listening stations on the bottom and tag the sawfishes with passive acoustic tags. These tags will leave a unique “bleep” on any receiver as the sawfish swims near, allowing us to track localized movements over longer periods and larger areas. We also will continue to satellite tag these and other sawfishes.
While sampling for sawfishes we also caught many sharks and rays. All of these animals also were measured, sexed, sampled (tissue for DNA) and tagged as part of ongoing studies of their biology and movement patterns. We also continued our work in Indian River Lagoon (IRL), where we began tagging young bull sharks with spaghetti and passive acoustic tags in a “new” region for us, the St. Lucie River estuary. This work is being done with our colleague, David Snyder, of Continental Shelf Associates. We also continue to download data from our underwater array of receivers in Mosquito Lagoon, Banana River and the northern IRL, where tagged bull sharks and rays still roam.
During this time period we put 5000 miles in land travel on the Guy Harvey adorned Hell’s Bay and God only knows how many sea miles on our faithful vessel!
For a complete list of our other featured blog posts and to see the full line of Guy Harvey Sportswear, please visit:www.guyharveysportswear.com
Guy Harvey art supports efforts to the IGFA and NCMC in their "Take Marlin Off the Menu" effort
Marlin populations throughout the world are being wiped out by commercial overfishing. Concerned about the health of billfish fisheries, the IGFA and the National Coalition for Marine Conservation joined forces in 2008 to create the “Take Marlin off the Menu” campaign. In just two short years, the campaign gained the support of such luminaries as Wolfgang Puck and the Wegmans Supermarket chain – as well as the attention of U.S. policymakers. Their support hinged largely on an Economic Analysis of International Billfish Markets which shows that the economic value of the U.S. billfish trade is almost nil in relation to the rest of the U.S. commercial fishing industry.
This new marlin artwork from Guy Harvey was created to support this important effort. It is currently illegal to harvest or import Atlantic-caught billfish into the U.S., but fish caught in the Pacific Ocean flood into U.S. markets in substantial numbers, threatening the survival of these fisheries. The Billfish Conservation Act of 2011 (S. 1451 and H.R. 2706), introduced into Congress on July 29, would close U.S. commercial markets to Pacific billfish, preventing their sale and importation (excluding Hawaii and Pacific Insular Island Area). In short, this important bipartisan legislation will help restore billfish populations and improve recreational fishing opportunities while concurrently creating jobs and other economic benefits.
Your support of the Billfish Conservation Act would close the U.S. to commercial billfish harvest, importation and sale. It would have a negligible impact on the commercial industry in the U.S. while helping increase the abundance of these important apex predators as well as the value of the recreational fishery, which brings in billions of dollars annually but has a minimal impact on billfish populations.
To learn how you can help support this important Take Marlin off the Menu effort please contact the IGFA at www.IGFA.org or NCMC www.savethefish.org
— Bill
For a complete list of our other featured blog posts and to see the full line of Guy Harvey Sportswear, please visit:www.guyharveysportswear.com
As some of you know, over the past ~3 months, we have been developing web sites to showcase the unprecedented results we are getting from the shark tracking research of the GHRI/GHOF/NSUOC and our partners. I am pleased to announce that we are now ready to go public with these web sites.
We’ve started with our tiger shark tracking results from the Atlantic and created interactive web sites that provide controls for displaying static or animated, long-term shark movements. The sites have several interaction options on the control panel on the right of the maps, and I think they are mostly self-explanatory.
To start off viewing these sites, please click on:
In the 2nd box in the control panel, select the shark “Correia” and click on “Animate”. That will start the animation (a 2-year track).
Based on the underlying programming, these sites are best viewed using the web browsers Google Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer 9.
There are quite a few interactive viewing options programmed, including changing the speed of the tracks and viewing the tracks with and without detection points. Furthermore, when the animation is complete and the track becomes static, you can hover the cursor over each point to see detailed detection point information. If you are interested, please explore the various interactive options.
Logos of our sponsors and key partners and links to their web sites are provided. We are truly indebted to them for their critical support of this groundbreaking research.
We are still hearing from many of the sharks and their movements will be updated every 1-2 weeks as time permits. We welcome your comments and feedback for improvement, and would be grateful if you would spread the word about these sites. Like all web sites, this is a work in progress and we will continue to improve the cosmetics and information content as we make further discoveries about the fascinating migration patterns of these remarkable sharks. Web sites for our other shark and billfish species tracking research will follow.
The web site team is:
Matt Johnston (NSU OC)
Mahmood Shivji (GHRI/NSUOC)
Brad Wetherbee (GHRI/NSUOC/URI)
Web site development sponsored by the NSUOC and GHRI.
Best wishes,
Mahmood Shivji, Ph.D.
For a complete list of our other featured blog posts and to see the full line of Guy Harvey Sportswear, please visit:www.guyharveysportswear.com
In what has become a veritable campaign of misinformation, Pew Environment Group issued yet another statement in support of setting annual catch limits on marine fisheries species without the benefit of science-based assessments. Taking the campaign to a new level, Pew is now revising history to make its points:
Holly Binns, director of the Pew Environment Group’s Southeast Fish Conservation Campaign, issued the following statement [Aug. 8] in response to the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council’s 8 to 5 vote to approve plans to prevent overfishing that protect dozens of species by setting science-based catch limits.
“‘The council has taken a forward-looking approach that allows managers to set scientifically sound fishing limits now before species suffer population declines. This proactive strategy is necessary to avoid what happened with South Atlantic red snapper, which is in such severe trouble that a fishing moratorium was needed in 2010 to save the species.’
“‘This plan will help avert steeper restrictions in the future, setting a course towards restoring a healthy, balanced ocean ecosystem. It is like visiting the doctor for preventive care, rather than waiting until you end up in the emergency room.’”
There are so many misstatements of fact in that statement, it is hard to know where to begin. For starters, there is nothing “scientifically sound” about setting catch limits without the benefit of a stock assessment. Those catch limits are going to be set by SWAG — scientific wild-ass guess – which doesn’t necessarily bother an environmentalist but does strike a nerve with anglers and others who actually use America’s public resources.
Second, the South Atlantic red snapper crisis came about precisely because NOAA Fisheries neglected to do a stock assessment for decades — the exact course of action Pew is advocating now for all marine fisheries. In a sense, the Council managed that fishery by SWAG and got it horribly wrong, so wrong that when they finally did do an assessment, they almost had to close the bottom of the entire South Atlantic to fix it. And ironically, if I recall correctly, Pew was very much in favor of that closure.
Third, as exemplified by South Atlantic red snapper, nothing about setting limits based on SWAGs is going to prevent managers from having to enact steeper restrictions in the future when and if an assessment finally shows them how radically wrong those limits are. And, in the most gaping fault with Pew’s logic, once the catch limits are set without an assessment, there is no motivation for managers to spend the money and resources to actually examine the state of the stock with an assessment. Red snapper became a crisis after the stock assessment. If they had never done an assessment — and NOAA Fisheries has shown a systemic reluctance to expend resources on assessments in recreational fisheries — red snapper would still be heading merrily down the drain, and no one would be the wiser.
Pew likes to say that managing this way is “preventative” medicine, and it’s better than ending up in the emergency room. In reality, they are advocating exactly the opposite. They are advocating that you never visit the doctor, never run any tests, never draw blood or have an x-ray. And by time you realize there is a problem, you go straight to the morgue.
That is no way to manage a fishery.
There are rational ways to manage wildlife resources that are employed all over this country. Anglers are seeking the same for marine species, no more, no less. But we are not going to get there by revising history and distorting reality.
Jeff
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Responding to last week’s announcement from the Government of the Bahamas that it will prohibit all commercial shark fishing in its more than 240,000 square miles of territorial water, Dr. Harvey commented: “I am very impressed and pleased that the Government of the Bahamas has taken the necessary and correct step to further protect its marine resources from over-exploitation by both local and foreign interests. This new legislation compliments the ban on commercial long line fishing enacted 20 years ago. The ban on commercial shark fishing and exportation by shark by-products is a huge step in the conservation of sharks worldwide.”
Through the Bahamas National Trust (BNT), Dr. Harvey met with government officials last March to add his voice and influence as a highly respected conservationist to call for strict regulations to ban the commercial fishing of all sharks in The Bahamas, an archipelago of 700 islands sweeping across 500 miles of open ocean. The Bahamas is the fourth country to ban shark fishing after Honduras, the Maldives and Palau. Estimates are that more than 70 million sharks are killed annually around the world.
One of the premier shark-watching destinations for divers, reeling in $800 million over the past 20 years for the Bahamian national economy, sharks, according to Dr. Harvey, were worth much more alive than dead.
“Many countries have seen their populations of sharks annihilated by commercial over-exploitation,” said Dr. Harvey. “Research has shown that shark populations do not recover. Other countries will take encouragement from the Bahamas’ very bold move. They are realizing, very quickly, the value of the living shark in maintaining the health of reef ecosystems. In addition, the economic value of a living shark to ecotourism is now widely accepted as a sustainable and non-consumptive use of a marine resource with many additional benefits to respective island nations.”
Last year, following news that a Bahamian seafood company was considering exporting sharks to the Far East, the BNT along with the U.S. based Pew Environmental Group and individual conservationists, such as Dr. Guy Harvey, who created a “Protect Bahamian Sharks” campaign logo and poster, initiated a petition drive to force the issue of banning commercial shark-fishing. The government upon receiving a petition signed by 5,000 Bahamian residents acted this week to protect the some 40 sharks species found in Bahamian waters.
With shark populations around the world continuing to spiral downward, marine scientists such as Dr. Guy Harvey, are working around the clock to give these magnificent animals a fighting chance for survival. Dr. Harvey is also seeding cultural change in the structure of shark fishing tournaments to creating Catch and Release divisions.
Last month, he brought his cause into the epicenter of one of the nation’s oldest and largest shark fishing tournaments in Ocean City, Maryland. Thanks in part to his efforts and a willingness to continue to adapt by the tournament founders and organizers, The Ocean City Shark Tournament’s cash and prize package payment in the catch and release division increased to over $15,000.
In May, the Second Annual Guy Harvey Ultimate Shark Challenge, a catch and release only tournament, was held on the West Coast of Florida in Punta Gorda. The tournament, created as a model for catch and release only shark tournament formats, drew some 3,000 competitors and spectators and paid out over $15,000 in cash and prizes.
In related shark conservation activity, Dr. Harvey offered his artistic talent and foundation sponsorship funding in support of the recent Circle Hook Symposium held in Miami. The symposium, hosted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is an international gathering of scientists, resource managers and constituents convening to discuss the performance and use of circle hooks in commercial, recreational and artisanal fisheries. While it is legal to use a J-hook to fish for sharks, experts such as Dr. Harvey recommend using a circle hook, where the barb points inward and not outward.
The oceans just got a little safer for sharks, and conservationist, artist and scientist —Guy Harvey couldn’t be more pleased.
For a complete list of our other featured blog posts and to see the full line of Guy Harvey Sportswear with a varied selection of shirts with fish, please visit:www.guyharveysportswear.com
The Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation recently presented a $100,000 donation to the Guy Harvey Research Institute (GHRI) at Nova Southeastern University during a ceremony at the new Guy Harvey Inc. world headquarters in Davie, FL. A significant part of these funds were raised from the sale of Guy Harvey sportswear. You may not know this, but you, the Guy Harvey customer helped provide these funds with your last Guy Harvey clothing purchase. Money is raised for ocean conservation efforts from the sale of every Guy Harvey shirt, Guy Harvey sandal, Guy Harvey hat, Guy Harvey belt, Guy Harvey jacket and all Guy Harvey clothing items. This $100,000 will be used to support the ongoing fishery research projects at the GHRI.
Photo, from left to right: Dr. Mahmood Shivji, Director of the Guy Harvey Research Institute; Guy Harvey; Dr. George Hanbury II, President & COO of NSU; Steve Stock, President of Guy Harvey Inc. and the GHOF; John Santulli, VP Facilities Management, NSU; Dr. Richard Dodge, Dean of NSU’s Oceanographic Center
For a complete list of our other featured blog posts and to see the full line of Guy Harvey Sportswear, please visit:www.guyharveysportswear.com
On any given dive in the Cayman Islands the chances of encountering any species of shark are very slim. Why is this? The primary reason is that most of the large coastal and ocean sharks have been caught in the last fifty years by long line fishing efforts directed at tuna and swordfish and more recently at sharks themselves.
Nowadays, sharks are kept by such industrial fishing operations which remove the fins and sell them to Asian interests. Many species of ocean going sharks such as blues, tigers, hammerheads, makos, threshers and oceanic whitetip sharks pass by our islands and sea mounts, and have extensive ranges so are considered highly migratory species. These have been heavily fished by high seas long lining operators. Other species exhibit more site fidelity and have a home range such as the Caribbean reef shark and the blacktip shark, which are the species we are more likely to encounter here.
To the untrained, eye blacktips are similar to the reef shark at typically six feet long, with a large dorsal fin and black tips on the pectoral fins. They have a pointed nose and compact body built for speed. They can grow to eight feet and are found worldwide in tropical and subtropical waters. Blacktip sharks feed over continental shelves on schooling fish such as sardines, jacks and mackerels. On the Pacific side of Panama, I have filmed them feeding on green jacks and scads along with schools of yellowfin tuna and spotted dolphins. In South Africa, blacktips are major predators on the annual sardine run. In Florida, the blacktip shark and the similar looking spinner shark are common near shore predators of mullet, sardines and jacks, and they are frequently caught by anglers fishing from the beach.
Around the Cayman Islands, blacktips are found in the shallow sounds and flats bordered by mangroves, and are primarily fish eaters, but will also consume sting rays and crustaceans. There is a very narrow shelf area here, so the black tip sharks keep to the flats and back reef areas that provide the most food.
An Oceanic Whitetip Shark which ate a trolled bait intended for marlin. Photo Courtesy of Richard Gibson
In complete contrast, the oceanic whitetip shark (OWS) is found roaming the open blue water and rarely comes close to shore. In looking at their shape, you know they are designed for the open ocean habitat. They are large animals with robust bodies, typically about eight feet, but growing up to twelve feet long. They are characterized by their very long, broad pectoral fins, with blotchy white tips as with all their other fins.
They have been a primary target in the shark fin trade and now their populations may be as low as 1% of their pre-exploitation levels in the western Atlantic. They used to be the most abundant “large” animal (over 100lb.) on the planet. Found in all the world’s tropical oceans, typically they associate with flotsam and those species of fish that congregate around flotsam and with migrating marine mammals such as whales and dolphins. They are usually solitary and slow moving, conserving energy between meals which may be weeks apart. Often, they are accompanied by pilot fish and rainbow runners. They are very inquisitive and will investigate anything floating looking for carrion. Tiger sharks exhibit similar behavior.
The only time we see OWS is when we go fishing offshore looking for dolphin fish, tuna and marlin. They may be encountered around a school of dolphin fish and rainbow runners in association with a floating log or shipping pallet. Off Jamaica, I have seen OWS following pilot whales and sometimes spotted dolphins. During the recently held Cayman Island International Fishing Tournament, Oliver Dubock, a PhD student working with the DoE and Overseas Territory Environment Programme (OTEP), tagged two OWS (caught by anglers participating in the tournament) with electronic tags to learn more about their natural history and migrations. Knowing that this species spends a lot of time at or near the surface, the satellite tags will pin point their migrations around the Cayman Islands. More information will be forthcoming. We know very little about the life history of this species which is on the verge of extinction and is listed as “critically endangered” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Open water shark interactive dives, with this species, are safely conducted in the Caribbean and Bahamas without incident, in spite of their inquisitive nature and reputation. But divers are cautioned to interact with the OWS with extreme caution.
If you are diving, snorkeling or fishing and encounter one of these rare species, please call the Dept. of Environment and let them know the location, date, species, approximate size and sex. If you catch a blacktip or an ocean whitetip shark, then take the necessary measurements and photos as well as a tissue sample (fin clip) and then please release them alive.
It is our collective responsibility to conserve the marine environment and maintain the biodiversity of the planet.
Fish responsibly and dive safely.
— Guy Harvey
For a complete list of our other featured blog posts and to see the full line of Guy Harvey Sportswear, please visit:www.guyharveysportswear.com
I would like to welcome you to the Guy Harvey Sportswear web site. Here we will feature my blog where I will report on expeditions, adventures, and various marine conservation efforts. We will also include various guest bloggers, videos and photos that I believe you will find interesting, whether you are a serious fishing or diving enthusiast, or simply someone who cares about the marine resource, loves living the coastal lifestyle, or just wants to learn more about Guy Harvey sportswear.
I would like to welcome you to the Guy Harvey Sportswear web site. Here we will feature my blog where I will report on expeditions, adventures, and various marine conservation efforts. We will also include various guest bloggers, videos and photos that I believe you will find interesting, whether you are a serious fishing or diving enthusiast, or simply someone who cares about the marine resource, loves living the coastal lifestyle, or just wants to learn more about Guy Harvey sportswear.
